


ill tidings (no comfort, no joy)

by leiascully



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28061985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: Once upon a time, she'd been a happy person.  A happier person.  Mercymorn the Eighth.  Mercymorn the merry.  Mercymorn the mirthful.  She could tell herself so, anyway.What had gone wrong?Besides the obvious.
Comments: 16
Kudos: 23
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	ill tidings (no comfort, no joy)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ellida](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellida/gifts).



Mercymorn the First, the Saint of Joy. It was a joke, or it would have been, if John had a sense of humor. Less mercy than joy, and precious little of either; more mourning than morning, although ages ago, a lover had told her she had hair the color of a sunrise. She had lost the details of it - her lover's name, gender, and House lost to the years - but she'd retained that one impression. She wasn't certain she'd had a compliment since. Augustine and Gideon certainly never gave her any, and John was too distracted. She missed the others. It had been lovely when there were more of them. The weight of the fate of the universe had been lighter, distributed among more shoulders. They'd had fun, on occasion. They'd been kind to each other, once in a while. 

No longer. That had been another age, a time when the near-invincibility of Lyctors was a joy and not a burden. 

The last time they'd had a party had been, oh, eons ago. The last time she'd fucked somebody had been...well, she didn't like thinking about that. At least she had the ability to make herself orgasm any time she wanted, with little more than a thought. It didn't make up for the rest. She had desperately hated all of Ulysses' sexy parties, but she longed to attend one now. Lyctorhood was endlessly lonely, despite being part of a deeply bonded group, despite carrying a ghost inside her. There had been few enough of them to begin with, and now there were fewer. And she was the only woman: John and Augustine and Gideon had each other. Once upon a time she had at least had Cytherea and Casseopeia, and for a little while, Anastasia, before that had gone badly wrong. 

At least she didn't menstruate anymore, unless she wanted to. Which she didn't, aside from the once. But that had all gone wrong anyway. Typical. 

* * * *

Once upon a time, she'd been a happy person. A happier person. Mercymorn the Eighth. Mercymorn the merry. Mercymorn the mirthful. She could tell herself so, anyway. 

What had gone wrong? 

Besides the obvious. 

Christabel had been the merry one. Her laughter had been like bells. Obnoxious clanging cowbells, maybe, but bells. Christabel had lit up a room. She had been a true soldier of the Eight, full of energy. Mercymorn still remembered the taste of Christabel's aura when she had sipped at Christabel's energy to supercharge her necromancy. It had seemed like a deep draught at the time but now she knew what it felt like to swallow Christabel whole. Christabel was an aquifer inside her. Surely Mercy had absorbed her merriment along with all the rest. But that wellspring was drier than a bone, dusty and salt-rimed. 

Maybe a person had a limited supply of happiness, and Mercymorn's stretched-out life had stretched it so thin she couldn't see it anymore. So many things in her existence were invisible at this point. 

* * * * 

What had been the moment her sainthood had failed her? Maybe the moment John had sat eating peanuts and licking the salt off his fingers in a meeting about saving the universe, as if any of them were ordinary people anymore. They didn't even have to eat, if they didn't want to. He had no need to masticate, deliberate, one by one, each everloving, motherfucking legume or whatever the hell they were. Some of them he even split in half along their longitudinal axes and ate each cupped half separately. Some of the halves he bit into two, as if he would infinitely extend the limited life of his peanuts, just as he had drawn out the limited lives of his Lyctors by coaxing them to end the lives of their cavaliers. No one else in the meeting was eating. Each of them was consumed by their fear of the Resurrection Beasts and the danger they posed to the worlds uncounted, in the Empire and beyond.

She wondered what life was like on the planets that hadn't been touched by necromancers. 

Maybe it had been the moment John had come in late to yet another meeting where the fates of the lives of millions hung in the balance and said, with an abashed little chuckle, "Don't mind me, I'm only God," and beamed at them so sunnily that they had actually laughed, and hated themselves for it. At least, Mercymorn had hated herself for it. It didn't take much these days. Phenomenal cosmic power, corresponding self-loathing.

* * * * 

The one thing she still had control of was herself. Mercymorn could alter her body down to the cellular level. She had the knack of cytoplasm, of membranes, of reticula and vacuoles. She had mastered the subtle twining of muscle and tendon into bone. She thought she could probably alter someone's genes if she wanted, unwind and respool their DNA. Maybe she could rewire Augustine to be less of a pompous asshole. He'd probably know what she was doing, though, and run her through. She couldn't risk losing her only ally, as much as she disliked him.

How had they become such unlikely bedfellows? She wished that part of it had been mere metaphor, but the seduction of their god-emperor had been the wisest path. They'd agreed. John was wise, despite his silly antics, and severe, but his cunning could be disarmed by kindness. It was a weakness they had always kept in mind, somewhere in the secret recesses, next to the memories of their cavaliers. 

* * * * 

There was a song Christabel had loved to whistle. Probably something she'd picked up in the barracks. Mercymorn found herself humming it sometimes. It was half-irritating, half-endearing, like Christabel herself. It was nearly all she had left of Christabel, except for the eyes, and the thrum of thanergy. Christabel was, in a way, forever dying, her soul caught in that pivotal moment. Mercymorn hoped that the soul was insensate, though hers wasn't, when she dove into the River. She wondered if Christabel still felt anything. She wondered if there was still any Christabel to feel, or just formless thanergy trapped in the cage of a living corpus. She wondered if Christabel surfaced to animate her soul-displaced form or if it was just the instincts, the galvanistic twitch of muscles trained to purpose. 

Sometimes she hated the eyes. She'd thought about changing them. She'd thought, now and then, about putting her eyes out. She was sure she could manage without them. But she owed Christabel everything. The least, the very least she could do, was to keep Christabel's eyes along with Christabel's memory. 

Sometimes she imagined she could feel Christabel's soul inside her, wedged in between her diaphragm and her heart, buzzing with energy. Christabel was the battery that powered her. Christabel was the reason that Mercy couldn't lie down and let herself be swallowed by a Resurrection Beast. Mercy had not deserved her sacrifice. Christabel had been good in a way that Mercy herself had never been. Christabel had wanted to save the universe. She'd given her life for that cause, and that was a trust Mercy had to redeem. 

* * * * 

If anyone knew that the Necromancer Prime, the Emperor Undying, was only a man after all, it was his Saints: Patience, Duty, and Joy. 

Her body was only a body. If it was all she had to sacrifice to save the universe, so be it. She let John expend himself into her. She'd already sealed her cervix, a delicate manipulation of tissue but quite simple. It was just as easy to close off her entrance when he'd withdrawn from her, distracted by a forceful kiss from Augustine. While Augustine distracted John even more thoroughly and rhythmically, Mercy drained the fluid into a vial she'd concealed in a space between her ribs and pressed it back into her flesh. It sparked with flicks of thalergy. John wouldn't find it unless he was looking for it, and even then, he'd suspect a tumor before he imagined they'd betray him. He'd worry about her, an awful thought. She peeked over her shoulder. Her God was flushed, dazed, panting, and happy as his Saint fucked him into the mattress of his relatively humble bed and they both grunted. Mercy returned to the rumpled covers to offer him more of herself, all she had to give. Over the Emperor's dark head, busy between her legs, Augustine nodded fractionally at her. Mercymorn nodded back, turned it into a smooth arch of her back, let her God make her come over and over. He owed her that much, anyway. Let him deserve his feelings of superiority for once in his long life. 

She'd removed her eggs, one at a time over a period of months to ensure that they ripened properly. They were in another vial, concealed in her chamber, pinpoint motes of flesh that throbbed thalergetically. A Lyctor's flesh, removed from its host, was no longer concealed from the Lyctor-sense. It was good information to have. 

They had the sparks of life, the raw essence that might combine to spawn a Lyctor-child. Mercy hadn't conceived of children, not for nearly a myriad. And now she would conceive and conceive again, or at least Commander Wake would. The Blood of Eden would have blood again. The child was a key who would walk through locked doors and revive the valiant dead Wake represented. The child was a gift who would deliver them. 

All that remained was to offer the materials to Wake, that she might conceal them in her own body in a way that Mercy had not. No sanitary glass vial tucked into the interstitial spaces for Commander Awake Remembrance of These Valiant Dead, no. She would have to implant them in a more intimate and hospitable receptacle. Mercy trusted her, and hated trusting her, but had no recourse. A God's child had overcome or supplanted a God before. It was in the stories. It was all they had. 

* * * *

Wake vanished, and along with her, the hopes of the First and Second Saints to serve the Emperor Undying, and perhaps those of the Third Saint. He kept his own counsel, as always.

Mercymorn stumbled on through the wreckage of her life. Sixteen, reduced to seven (well, eight if you counted Anastasia, but she had never been herself again, after), counted down over long years to three (four if you counted Cytherea, in her tattered raiments). And then John had the idea to add to their numbers. He would stage a festival game of sorts, a competition. The true cost of the prize would not be counted until it was too late. He relied on that, just as he'd relied on Mercymorn and Christabel, on Augustine and Alfred, on taciturn Gideon and the incandescent Pyrrha and all the rest. 

"What use will we find for a passel of infants?" Mercymorn snarled at him, loathing herself. She should have been delighted at the prospect of siblings, many hands to lighten the work. Instead, she thought of Mercymorn of the Eight House, siphoning her cheery cavalier: Christabel, who always came back from the brink, who always soldiered on. So many horrors lay before them, and the heavy weight of ten thousand years of recorded time. She flinched at the thought. More Lyctors, more sacrifice, more cavaliers subsumed into the hungry hearts of their former friends. And what would they be, the baby Lyctors? Cannon fodder for the Resurrection Beasts? They'd have more training than Mercy and her cohort had had, if she had anything to say about it, but there could never be enough. 

At least Mercymorn might have cherished her child, if it had come into being and survived to fulfill its purpose. It didn't seem like her, but she might have. John imagined children just to send them into battle. He had eight Houses full of people's children to send forth to conquer the unnecromantic infidels or whatever rhetoric the Cohort used. Mercy might have had one to save all the rest, but that hope had withered. Perhaps the thalergy she'd sensed in her cells had been an echo, reflected light from Christabel's eyes. Ah well. The child, if it had come into being, would have led a complicated life: two mothers (three and four, if she counted Christabel and Alecto) and a father who was unlikely to predecease it. Would a Lyctor's child luck its way into a Lyctorhood that didn't involve putting anybody to the blade? They'd never know now. If it had come off, she might have let herself brood a whole batch of Lyctots. At least she was spared that labor, and what might have come before it. 

Let it end, Mercy might have prayed, but her God was only a few wings away. She feared he might hear her supplication. At best, he would reduce her to atoms. At worst, his brow would crinkle in uncomprehending sorrow. It wasn't fair for the Emperor Undying to pout like a child and look so winsome as he did. She hated him a little more with every pucker of his lips. 

Soured faith was a bitter, poisonous draught. She drank deep, and smiled despite the ache in her jaws.

* * * *

The necromancers and their cavaliers, the flowers of their Houses and the thorns, were delivered to Canaan House. It had been lovely, long ago. Surely it was crumbling now. But John was sentimental, in a way no Emperor, Undying or mortal, could afford to be. 

Sixteen became fourteen when Cytherea got wind of them. Mercymorn almost wished she'd thought of it, when she heard the stories. Fourteen necromancers and cavaliers, reduced over a roiling cauldron of suspicion and fear to two. Certainly there were a few unaccounted for, but the important thing was the two they had counted. Baby Lyctors, wobbling into their power. Mercymorn hated them nearly as much as she hated herself and Augustine and John. Ianthe was horrible; Harrow was a useless, pathetic child who had somehow got it wrong. Not a Lyctor, she was at best Lyct-ish. Maybe that was inevitable. The Ninth House was a pale (ha!) imitation of the other seven, having inherited nothing but the Emperor Undying's obsession with the waxen corpse of Alecto.

Mercy felt ancient next to the baby Lyctors. They were awful, naive and clumsy. Surely Mercymorn and her compadres had never been so utterly pubescent. They had been sophisticated, self-assured. They had been stronger and more confident in their sevenfold glory. Ianthe's washed-out complexion made her look like an Eighth House siphoner, not a Third House beauty like her twin had been rumored to be. Harrow was nothing. Harrow was the bitten-off rind of a frostbitten fingernail draped in dark rags. Harrow mooned around in her smeary paint and accomplished nothing but a foul soup. Harrowhark Nonagesimus would never be a Lyctor despite the fact that her cavalier had surrendered his life to her ends. All of it, every bit of it, had been wasted effort. There would never be a fellowship of Lyctors the way there had been before. They would never defeat the Resurrection Beasts, the ghosts of their own greed. It was all too moralistic, too pat. Mercy could read the script all the way to the heavy, blotched lettering that proclaimed The End. 

* * * * 

In her rooms, she begged Christabel's forgiveness, and Alfred's, and Pyrrha's and Loveday's and Valancy's and Titania's and Samael's and Nigella's and Naberius' and Ortus' for good measure, as if any measure could find goodness in her. She railed at them for trusting in John's mad schemes. Sometimes, practicing with her rapier, she wept hot salty tears onto the iridescent shimmer of her First House robes. Mercy mourning. Mercy lost. She begged the forgiveness of the lost children of the Eight Houses gobbled up in the ancient maw of Canaan House, and the lost children in their blinding Cohort whites blown to smithereens, the brief candles of their lives turned into fuses for thanergetic fireworks, smears of sparks against the black.

She had done her best, and her best was incredible and was also nothing. Out, out: she would never scrub the blood from her hands, and she only half-minded. 

There was no one left who might forgive her. She had burned up even her own mercy, and her own right to ask. 

Mercymorn wrapped herself in shimmering white and walked step after steady step into hell.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I hope you like lots and lots of introspection! I tried to give you some deliciously bitter dregs of joy.


End file.
